Shadows of Poetry
by Ea Skyrah
Summary: For the dreams that are unanswered, and the nightmares that are lived: a quick AU shot of Azriel's ascent from the darkness.


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Warning: Dark!Azriel

Az is the character I can relate to the most in the ACOTAR world. His childhood stages...no person, immortal or mortal, young or old, deserves that. This fic was _supposed_ to turn out touching and sappy, but it didn't.

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 _All things truly wicked, start from innocence_

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Pain either dulled or worsened in prison.

Azriel supposed he know both like the back of his hand—or the lack of one. Burned flesh overlapped with torn skin for poor healing set for practices he'd never learned. His back ached, his vision blurred from the smoke of yesterday's pyre-like ritual.

It was a gift, as well, he supposed, to be able to tame fire. He'd heard stories of another court—Autumn—mastering the flame. To fly free, to visit the other tales, to ascertain the myths—the scars throbbed in the silent darkness, a tacit reminder of who he was. Broken. Young. Scarred.

Unwanted.

No better than a beaten bag, his body had slammed against stone and wall, his mind beaten like his bare back, upon which a mass of a mess laid. His wings, strewn and strung, ripped and ruptured, told a different story, a ruination of his own heritage.

Illyrian.

The word mocked him.

So it was words he learned to manipulate.

He listened to the shadows, which eagerly absorbed his attention. Perhaps it was through the insanity of loneliness that his body strove to adapt to, but the lashes of night spoke to him. They did not whisper sweet nothings, but mad melodies.

Music and words, thrumming out a vivacious and vicious void of breathings and murmurings. In his time in recollection, words became his anchor, or facet of loss. With a broken nail, he scrawled his first poem into the wall.

The pain didn't bother him. Nothing much did, anyways.

Until words itself were stolen from him.

His step brothers found him reciting quick breaths in the early mornings.

"Repeat what you just said," the nearest male hissed.

They did not dribble faebane across his back that day. Instead, they crammed it down his throat, where the words ingrained in his brain burned, another flame flaring. He could not speak the words of worldly things that life in the washed away dark had taught him.

 _Whispers of shadows_

 _fastly fleeing through flooded fields_

 _Listen as I weep_

 _Agony of air_

 _endure excruciation_

 _for wings and belief denied_

 _Smoke on sorrow_

 _for the arrival of tomorrow_

 _Aching and shaking_

 _Empty inside_

 _Nowhere to hide_

 _Everywhere to die_

 _I swallow the ash_

 _To where I return_

 _Soon_

He asked the shadows to tell him about dreams, and they whispered back in riddled ruses. He learned the sleight of words, of tilts and quirks. How the smile meant fire and to await flame. How the snarl meant whipping and caging. How the crack of fingers meant beatings and bashings.

"Tell me what you were saying," the nearest step-brother repeated, yanking the torn wing line deeper, watching the gashes reopen with predatory satisfaction.

"Did magic find him?" another voice slurred.

"Look at the wall," said one, dully.

A pause, not of reprieve, but of returning retribution.

"What is that," one flatly said.

Azriel shrunk against the wall.

The nearest step-brother watched every movement, and snarled.

Another laughed. "Pitifully weak."

Eyes gleamed. "Good thing we beat up. Spared the lords from seeing it."

 _It._ That was what he was.

Would be.

If not for the shadows whirling around him with roaring claws and snapping teeth, a beast without a leash, he would have vanished. He'd asked them for dreams when he lived in a nightmare.

"Look at _it_ snap back," one laughed.

Azriel sagged, the sound grating his already shredded bones.

"Thinks _it_ stands a chance."

He didn't. Couldn't.

"Better beat it out of _it_."

He waited.

"I call the hands."

The click and crunch of the match brought the shadows in a wretched inferno around him.

"I'll wreck the wings."

His heavy mass of malformed wings drooped, sagging against the ground. Waiting. Time ticked by.

"I'll get more faebane."

He could see the twinkle of vigorous vices shining in the surrounding darkened orbs.

The last step-brother stalked forward, a cruel smile etched on hardened features. "I'll erase the wall."

Erase.

Purge his essence, his last matters.

The shadows looped around the cell, darting between the seven intruding shapes. They danced through the darkness, and jumped when the third brother set aflame the match. A running cord of tugging threatened to drag him under, and without a thought, Azriel complied.

He drowned in the sorrowed seas and went limp into to the light. For under that heavy, deep folding layers laid a tug of power he answered to.

Azriel whispered back to the shadows.

The words on the wall vanished.

One step-brother cried in outrage.

And then screamed.

Blood dotted the walls, seeping through every crevice and crack. Crimson liquid bathed the floor, soaking the bottoms of bare feet, previously cold and confident, casually strolling into this cell.

Not anymore

The shadows painted the sentence of severed ties, and one step-brother shuddered, dropping into the floor. Hands touched the salted silver mixed with faebane, and a scream pierced the air.

The six brothers tracked the blood on the wall to the limp body on the floor. Their eyes traced the barren and broken youngest brother's carcass to up to the scrawled loops on the wall.

 _I am not_ it.

One brother dropped to the floor, the shadows crooning around him, darting within and without warm flesh.

More blood dripped onto the wall, and the five step-brothers stilled in shock.

The shadows preened.

The wall wept with blood.

 _I am not_ it, the words had said.

Fresh blood glimmered.

 _I am Azriel._

The five remaining brothers hissed, and heads snapped towards the once-Illyrian.

Shadows encased, soul dimmed. Forged from flying flame, battered bruises, soaring from sickled sensations.

The shadows bowed to him.

Paused.

Azriel nodded his head.

The cell door whirred shut with swift soundness.

The five brothers palmed their daggers and knifes, knees bent.

"I've always waited for when to kill you," one sneered.

"Limb by limb."

"Tear the veins."

"Gut the remains."

"Harness your heart."

Azriel merely offered them a light smile. The words of wistfulness, of what-ifs, had wormed through him. But that was not his destiny, he supposed. Perhaps it was better to live in darkness if the light above allowed such twisted evils to exist.

"What are you waiting for?" the oldest step-brother snarled. "Try us."

But Azriel had waited for uncounted years in this cell, where his tormentors were now locked in with him.

He could wait a little longer.

"Can't speak?" another one taunted. "Faebane got your tongue?"

Azriel shook his tongue, and nearly grinned.

It was an utmost irony of what word had been thrown at him:

 _Pathetic._

The shadows reached out, strumming chords to a cacophony, circling around the other male's head.

The nearest step-brother froze, eyes dilated.

The shadows withdrew, and poured release down Azriel's tongue. The broken body willingly drank, and a looming sensation of more began to build within him.

The other four brothers watched the other step brother's irises grow, and stilled as he began stammering and shuddering, body rocking back and forth. Blood spurted as his eyes popped.

Azriel licked his lips. "Pop goes the weasel," he said quietly.

The four flinched, and the blood began to blossom on the already stained wall.

Wary eyes for warlike wits.

The threads of blood flung against the wall into a crescendo.

 _By breaking the broken, the broken will break you._

The four step-brothers howled, and launched themselves at him.

Four bodies missed, and crashed onto the blood soaked ground. Red and brown and black colored the cell, and Azriel winnowed out of the prison that held him chained for years, the shadows matching his heartbeat.

No longer was he outmatched.

The four blanched at the sight of him. Across from him. Trapped by him. Three dead by him.

The eldest pressed his face against the bars. "Do you think pretty magic tricks can keep you free?"

"You will suffer father's wrath," the other growled.

"Your wings will be ripped."

"Your hands and tongue will be butchered."

Azriel tilted his head to the same lilt they had once looked at him with. Cracked his knuckles. Smiled and then snarled.

Eight eyes widened as his wings unfurled, and the shadows patched and placated. The fury ebbed away slowly as black clouds rained fear onto the four. The droplets of dread mixed with the liquid of their fallen three brothers.

The shadows rose next to him, and whirled through him. Existed for him. Listened to him. Spoke to him.

Bowed to him.

"If you let me out—"

The blood bathing the floor soared up and up and up until the whirled around the spoken brother with limbs of limber lattice. The life liquid shot out and crammed up the step brother's nostrils and down his throat, as he'd crammed faebane down Azriel's throat.

Azriel did not want to hear bargains. Not when his childhood was bargained away into the darkness from his true identity.

"I am Azriel," he said.

Azriel stared at the remaining three.

One fell to his knees, sobbing. The second stared frozen at the fallen bodies. The third—the oldest—glared at him with equivalent hatred.

The shadows cooed at the one on the ground, and fluttered when he screamed—watching his dripping tears transformed into rivers of blood.

Two step-brothers watched the third cry out his life, head thudding to the floor. One face showed remorse, the other rage.

Azriel felt none other than the numbness the prison had left him with.

The shadows had gone tired of blocking their attempts to winnow out, so Azriel allowed the access with a tilt of his head. The eldest immediately lunged at him, faebane coating an ash arrow, a selected favorite used on him to pull apart his wings.

The other brother merely watched with widened eyes, and turned his head away.

The shadows caught the arrow, slightly recoiling, but lunged forward. The tip hit not the aggressor, but the bystander. The second brother screamed as his wings fell to the floor, the sound of smacking and screaming surrounding the darkness. His spine lurched up, then slammed against the ground. Unmoving.

"And then there was one," Azriel sang.

The eldest's lip peeled back. "Looks like we created a killer."

Azriel froze, and the other male took that as an opportunity to sling out onyx blades. The shadows shrieked as one punctured his stomach, the other through his upper leg.

He shook off the returning pain, a feeling he'd mastered through months to turning years. He gripped the swerving knuckle that nearly nicked his jaw, and stumbled backwards, wings crashing against a stoned wall. Pain rippled through him, but he ignored the feelings to submit.

Azriel managed to duck the flash of blades that missed his head, and tightened his hands. The shadows leapt into action, fulfilling the unfinished haunted dance. His prisoner howled, and darkness battered against the shadows, carving a shield around his body. Azriel stared down at the wards, and tore through them without a second thought.

"No," Azriel rasped. "You created a dreamer." Who dreamt for more.

The shadows no longer whispered, but roared. He was not it. He could talk. He could use his hands. He would fly.

The other male must have seen that determined sentiment in his eyes, because he bolted for the stairs, up and up and away. The shadows seethed as Azriel slowly started after him, and looked up the stairs, where a door with thorns and roses wrapped around the edges.

With a blink, the door sealed shut.

The step-brother snarled and smashed his magic against it.

But the silence of the shadows surged stronger.

Azriel heaved in a deep breath, and flared out his wings. Testing and twitching. He mastered the pain, and roared.

His wings flapped up, and beated through the musty air, mixed with the tang of blood.

His back screamed and protested, but Azriel's eyes glowed gold in the darkness, the wisps of hazel gone as he rose higher and higher from his prison under the ground.

His wings flapped until he was level with his step-brother, who stared at him with fear and awe.

Azriel smiled. His step-brother snarled.

The shadows swarmed around the other male's body, who shivered and shuddered, as if each touch stung. Azriel sent a strand of darkness towards his last captor's hands. He let the shadows reflect the nightmare of burning and raging.

Of life in darkness and despair.

Of what thrived underneath.

Of evils enhanced.

The male screamed, his hands trembling outward, an offering, an action of finale.

The hands that had burned Azriel turned inwards, and grasped his own neck. The shadows sent a kiss across the other male, and those hands snapped his own bone.

The head hurled off into the bottom of the cell, bouncing off the steps of the stairs. The body fell against the step and rolled slowly down and down and down.

Azriel slouched against the door, the thorns pricking him, the roses matching the fresh blood that had rained.

He looked down, where the shadows salvaged the remains. Where the shadows gave him freedom from a nightmare so that he could imagine.

Dreams with dried, detrimental deceased.

Seven dead.

Azriel fell onto his knees as the door swerved open, and leaves coated the damp ground, petals flying through the air. Another presence that sang to the same darkness of despair, hurt and harmed, flitted through the prison.

He inhaled, and slowly exhaled, eyes turning back into bleak hazel. Slowly, ever so slowly, he looked up.

And breathed truly for the first time.

The male, oozing so much raw power Azriel nearly crumpled to his knees, surveyed the seven bodies; his power unfurled through the dark and dampened cell, prodding and searching the depths—testament to the truth that existed.

 _Rhysand_ , the shadows sang to him. _High Lord of the Night Court._

At last, the dark-haired male—Rhysand—offered Azriel a wry grin. "Looks like you'll need seven siphons, shadow-singer."

 _Siphons_. Azriel knew without a doubt they could not be the flames burning his hand, the faebane down his throat, or the whip across his back.

Rhysand offered a hand to Azriel, who debated with himself in that second. But —he saw the truth in the other male's eyes, filled with dreams unanswered. Saw the speckled, stars shining within those orbs. Saw light.

Azriel took the offered hand and gripped it steadily, the other male not grimacing at the marred and scarred skin. And for the first time, the figure — who had lived in the darkness and befriended the shadows — finally received his gift.


End file.
